


Shutter Speed

by delgaserasca



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-10
Updated: 2014-04-10
Packaged: 2018-01-18 22:11:58
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,446
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1444702
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/delgaserasca/pseuds/delgaserasca
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><em>He has no idea where he is or how he got there.</em> Sam in the aftermath of the S1 finale. Diverges from canon, obviously.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Shutter Speed

**Author's Note:**

> Episode tage to the S1 finale; re-posting from livejournal. (I knooow.) This was actually supposed to be a fic about Dean and about Dean leaving John and Sam because he can’t deal with (a) their unending obsession with the road to death and (b) the person he becomes around them. It was also going to be a fic about what Dean never gets from his father and how he finally stops being able to deal with being the dependable son. Instead you guys got amnesiac!Sam and the after-effects of Dean’s departure. Lucky you.

And when he finally opens his eyes, Dean is gone.

 

 

 

 

The demon is still out there, and Dad is furious, and they’re driving to somewhere, he’s not sure where, but he’s behind the wheel, and he’s anxious, too, and he’s _driving_ , godammit, but he can’t work out where to and why they never got there.

All he knows is that between sitting behind the wheel and waking up in a hospital bed six months later, he has no idea where he is or how he got there and what scares him most isn’t that he’s lost time but that he’s lost his place in the world and now he feels comfortable.

 

 

 

 

(And there are things you dream about, things that haunt you like they never haunted other boys and girls, and you’re not quite sure if what you’re dreaming is a dream or something you’ve actually seen at some point in time, whether it’s ahead of you or behind, you’re not sure. All you know is every time you close your eyes, every time you make another strike, kill another evil sumbitch, the world becomes a little less solid).

 

 

 

 

He does try. When they finally discharge him (he’s in Albuquerque? Why is he in _Albuquerque_?) he heads for a payphone and wastes some change trying to call Dean and then his dad. No one picks up and he leaves a message on both answer machines, before heading for a motel. He needs to find his brother, but he’s only got his wallet and his dead cell phone, not to mention the set of clothes he’s wearing.

He walks on for a little bit, enjoying the sun, not quite able to shake the shadow that lingers on his back. He wonders where his dad is, where Dean is and why they’d just leave him in a hospital in New Mexico—

_Meg’s head snaps back with a jolt and the demon bursts forth from her mouth with a scream, screeching and painful, and you’re not so sure you can look anymore except there’s nothing else to be done; she screams and you want to say ‘I’m sorry, god, I’m so sorry,’ but you don’t because you still don’t know if the deed is done._

—and his head pounds with the effort of enlightenment. The images come in short, sudden bursts, and he holds his head as though trying to stop it from flying apart, the pressure like a knife point to the centre of his skull. Not just pictures, though, not just images, but emotions, too, and fragments of thought, and underneath the fear and the hatred and the sympathy run currents of disgust.

The last image he sees is Dean’s face, cold set and heartless.

 

 

 

 

If only you could remember. But you can’t. You were in a car, and Dad was mad, and Dean was in the back seat, but that’s all you know. If you could just _remember_ , then you could work out how you ended up where you did, and how to get back. Because there’s still a battle to be had, even if you’re not quite sure who with anymore.

 

 

 

 

_(I can’t remember his face)._

 

 

 

 

He ends up sending off for cards, the way he learned off his dad, and he sets to the business of finishing what the three of them had started. He buys guns, ammunition, scimitars and machetes; he stocks up on holy water and rock salt, buys maps, starts to track weather patterns across the continent. He leaves Albuquerque, heads east for Texas where he finds (and deals with) a family of poltergeist. He calls his father, leaves another message, and then he calls Dean. A mechanic voice tells him that the number is no longer in service, and he slams the phone back into the cradle with frustration. _Where the hell are you guys?_

In Gainesville he comes across another woman in white; in Admore, a priest conjuring a demon to control his congregation. Just outside La Cygne he finds a nest of modern-day succubae and a cantankerous old woman named Sadie who saves his ass at least twice. He spends a day wandering around Lawrence before heading south-east to Clinton where he loses half his pinkie battling hand to hand with a possessed thirteen year old girl. He keeps going, day and night, he keeps searching. Funny. He doesn’t think of going back to school, not anymore. There’s nothing left in that dream for him.

He keeps calling his dad, he keeps leaving messages but when another year passes without word, he begins to lose hope of being able to track him down. It never crosses his mind that maybe they’re dead and it’s just him; he doesn’t let himself think that way because there’s no happy ending at the end of that road and he’s got no patience for bitter truths. He’s happy wallowing in the denial he’s built up around him, and he’s mowing through the demonic population of the southern states, if nothing else.

He still has nightmares, and mind-splitting day time visions. He still sees Meg, her body falling limp after the demon was expelled, the way the sound pummelled through his head like a locomotive, an endless cacophony of sound. And he still sees snippets of things he doesn’t recognise, or isn’t able to categorise. He still remembers being in the car— _and Dad is furious, and Dean is in the back seat, and—_ and he falls asleep on another bed in another motel room on yet another highway, listening to the lifeless automated tones on the other end of his cell.

_We’re sorry but the number you have called is no longer in service. Please contact—_

 

 

 

 

(And it’s the short flashes that hit you hardest, like a Polaroid of almost-memory running though your mind, stuck on slideshow, click, there’s another one, click, click, and the images don’t make much sense but you’re certain they’ve already happened and you’re too late; click, there’s Dean, struggling up against a wall, fighting, always fighting, blood streaming from his shirt, and you’re fighting, too, fighting inertia, you’re pushing and; click, there’s your dad, and he’s crying, almost, and you’re looking at him, and you’re scared and you _don’t know what to do_.

Click. Click. Click.

A gun. There was a gun in your hand. There was a gun in your hand and you were pointing it at your dad, and he was yelling at you, yelling and struggling, and you had to make a decision and you didn’t know, you couldn’t possibly have known, couldn’t be expected; you don’t, you don’t know, you never knew – can you do this? – no, no you can’t. There was a gun in you hand. You were pointing a gun at your _dad_ ).

 

 

 

 

He wakes up with a start, bolting upright, memory momentarily bright and clear. They were driving to a hospital. Dad had been furious and Dean had been something else entirely, and he’d been driving them to the hospital because, because, because. Because what? He rubs his eyes tiredly and tries to piece together what he knows.

They exorcised Meg. There was a gun and Dean took it; he’d been angry at him for that one. Dean had been thrown against a wall. John was bleeding on the floor. They were in a car driving to the hospital— they were headed for a hospital but they never got there, they never made it and it just doesn’t make _sense_.

 

 

 

 

He remembers—

_"—Dad, Dad! Don’t you let him kill me—"_

_"You shoot me; you shoot me, you_ shoot _me in the heart, son—"_

_"—Sam, don’t you do it... Sam, no—"_

And he’s not sure what comes next.

 

 

 

 

You don’t remember what your brother looks like. You can think of little things, the shape of his face in profile when he was driving, or the sound of his thumbs thrumming against the wheel, but you can’t picture his face; just indistinct shapes, approximate forms.

One day you’re driving through Wichita Falls when a vision strikes you like a spear to the temporal lobe and you have to pull over, dizzy and in agony. The pictures are unclear, like much of your life, and they flicker once or twice, repeating like a one-track before wisping away. That’s the day you know your Dad’s dead, that you’ve lost him, that you’re alone.

You call Dean’s cell _–ber you have called is no long_ — and you spend three nights in a motel room, locked up with a couple of bottles of whiskey and a head full of sore regrets.

The next day, you start the drive back west to California. Back to life.

 

**FIN.**  



End file.
